


Not the Ordinary Type

by missmollyetc



Category: Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue
Genre: Gen, alternate version available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-25
Updated: 2013-10-25
Packaged: 2017-12-30 10:25:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1017477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmollyetc/pseuds/missmollyetc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If the Red Ranger powers draw from an accepted pathway to the Morphin Grid, and the Titanium Ranger power connects to a different aspect of the same source, then how dissimilar do the men using them have to be?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not the Ordinary Type

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kiirotsubasa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiirotsubasa/gifts).



> Written for the prompt: "Carter the perfectionist can't help but struggle with the fact that he wasn't able to use the Titanium powers, but Ryan can. This causes tension between the two men that Ryan can't quite understand. What happens to bring them together to make them such good friends?"

The trouble with voicing your suspicions about your commanding officer’s long-lost formerly-evil son, apparently, was that it led to tracking him down through two locker rooms, the engineers' bay, and finally, the maintenance alley that curved around Miss Fairweather’s lab. Carter swallowed, glancing up at the dusty emergency lights lining the bulkhead over Ryan's head. He walked inside, and let the door shut behind him.

“What?” Ryan asked, tilting his head and rocking on his feet.

Carter coughed, and took a breath. “I asked you a direct question back there,” he said, deepening his voice.

Ryan nodded. "Yeah, and it wasn't any of your business."

Carter froze for a second, and then shook his head hard. “I had a point, damn it!”

Ryan snorted; the edges of his open mouth curled up. He tucked both hands in his pockets; his slim body, broad shoulders and barely a curl of waist, angled towards him. Carter rubbed the back of his left fist against his stomach, and then over his mouth. 

“How can you have the Titanium power?” he asked, again, if…a little more hoarsely. “How can you stand to even touch it?”

He dug his knuckles into his stomach, and told himself he wasn’t cold and he wasn’t in pain. It was just the memory of those things, of slapping on the morpher and suddenly drowning in a torrent of _wrong_. Ryan shrugged, eyebrows rising as he pursed his mouth. 

“Don’t give me that,” Carter said, coming off the clammy wall. “If you’re going to keep using them in the field, then I need to know—”

“Why me, and not you?” Ryan asked, smirking.

Carter ground his teeth. “If you’re injuring yourself in some misguided—if this is your way of proving yourself to us, then—”

Ryan chuckled, and Carter’s mouth snapped shut. Ryan swayed on his feet, and sucked in his cheeks, ducking his head to laugh, and the sound recoiled off the metal walls to crumple on the floor. 

“Do you remember,” Ryan asked, looking up with too-bright eyes, “what I asked you when that minion was giving me my physical?”

“His name is Mosely.”

Ryan shrugged, and raised his eyebrows. He took his hands out of his pockets, and bunched the hem of his worn t-shirt in both hands, before smoothing it out. Carter remembered that shirt, he'd added it to the pile of castoffs they'd gotten together for Ryan, when Commander Mitchell was sure he was going to stick around.

“I remember,” Carter said, rubbing his tongue over his teeth. “You asked me if I…”

“Knelt at my father’s feet, or stood at his back,” Ryan finished for him, and took a swaying step closer. He raised his chin.

“It was nonsense; you’d just gotten hit in the head.”

“I wanted to know if I could step over you, or fit myself around you instead,” Ryan said. “Because he gave you the chance first, didn’t he? Handed you the Titanium Morpher and watched you fall apart.”

“The preliminary trial was a failure,” Carter said, shoulders tensing.

Ryan lifted his hands, and paused when Carter stiffened. “But you said at his back,” he murmured, eyes flickering up and down Carter’s face. “And it was true.”

“I’m still the red ranger,” Carter said, knocking Ryan’s hands out of his face. “What did you think; I was going to be thrown out the docking hatch?”

“Why not?” Ryan asked, suddenly and incredibly still. 

Carter opened his mouth, and then closed it. “Because we’re…”

“Human?” Ryan whispered. 

Carter nodded quickly, pressing his lips together. And there it was, the thing that always tripped Ryan up, that kept him out of crew poker games and drove him to research ancient lore in the bowels of the Aquabase. How very human Ryan was in face and heart and blood, until the moment he turned, and something deadly and curious and broken stared out of his face. He’d backhanded Mosely across the room for touching Dana’s arm to get her attention, and still didn’t see the problem.

Ryan shrugged again, and turned his palms to the ceiling. “It’s a learning process,” he said, smiling. “I’m just trying to fit in.”

Carter snorted, and Ryan stepped forward. “All right, all right,” he said. “Because you stand at my father’s back—” Carter frowned, and Ryan’s smile grew a hint of teeth. “—and command me in the field, I’ll tell you.”

He moved into Carter’s space, and grabbed the hand Carter placed between them. “You can’t use them,” Ryan said, licking the corner of his mouth when Carter twitched, “because you’ve never had to learn how to keep yourself apart.”

Carter frowned, and flexed his wrist in Ryan’s grip. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Ryan smoothed his hand down the length of Carter’s arm to his elbow and dropped away. He grinned, and Carter’s skin prickled. He flexed his freed hand and tucked into his pockets.

“I bet the red ranger powers make you feel like the best you’ve ever been,” Ryan said. “Miss Fairweather keeps talking about how you’re the pinnacle of success, the curve we’re all matched against. It drives Joel nuts, you know that?”

“She just means I bonded well,” Carter said, feeling his eyebrows draw together. “It’s—I’m good, yes, but I’m not—f”

“You’re the destroyer of nightmares and monsters,” Ryan said. “It takes everything you are and elevates it, doesn’t it?”

“Not…exactly,” Carter said, swallowing. “It does feel…good.”

“How do you improve upon perfection, then?” Ryan asked, and Carter's heart banged against his chest. “You make it work for you. You make a deal.”

Carter closed his mouth, and swallowed heavily. “No, that’s…it didn’t feel like that, it felt like—”

“The morpher wanted something from you? It wanted to carve its place in your bones and use you? The Titanium Power is a weapon. Trust me, it takes one to know one,” Ryan said.

He shut his mouth and Carter realized they were inches apart. “You’re not a weapon.”

“I’ve been rearranged,” Ryan said, staring. “It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last, and the best thing to do when something you want, wants something from you, is to make sure you keep a part of what you like behind very clear boundaries. Every pain has a purpose.”

He broke off with a laugh, and Carter wanted to look away. "So what is that supposed to...you should stop. You should stop if it's hurting you," he said.

“I’m at your back,” Ryan murmured, which…nonsense, it made no sense. Carter blinked at him, and shook his head. "This world isn’t so strange,” Ryan continued, humming a little. “We can do great things here.”

He raised his hand. "Friends?" 

They shook. “I don’t, you’re on my team, at my side. I don’t want a shield,” Carter stammered, and Ryan’s hand tightened. “I want you to fight _with_ me.”

“It’s a deal,” Ryan said, slowly.

Carter held on until Ryan turned away, dropping his hand and flexing his own as he followed Ryan out of the alleyway, and into the lab. His stomach shuddered as Ryan nodded at Miss Fairweather, leaning over her shoulder while she calibrated a shoulder-mounted netting cannon for Dana's zord. Ryan glanced back at him, smiling, and Carter nodded back.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, so I wasn't certain if my recipient was down with porn, or not, and the prompt was RIGHT THERE, so I wrote porn as well. If you want to see it, it's located at:
> 
>  
> 
> [Rest Be Sent to Hell](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027425)


End file.
